Chapter 128

Three weeks later Scott was sat in his bathrobe sipping champagne from a crystal goblet in his penthouse suite in the Grand Hotel Kempinski, Slovakia’s finest. He was channel surfing the news channels idly. Crime and famine… corruption and disasters...the world would never change no matter how hard he tried. So, why try?

He had decided that the best way to change the world wasn’t by playing superhero and locking up small-time criminals—where they’d no doubt be chewed up and spat out by the system, only to re-offend. No, to truly change the world, you had to make as many people happy as you could.

And how did you do that? By giving the people what they wanted. All his working girls were doing that right now - giving the good citizens of Slovakia exactly what they desired. Making people happy. And it seemed only fair that Scott profited in some small way by helping to make the world a better place.

The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. Scott picked it up in one hand and swirled his champagne inside the glass with the other.

"Yes?" He said.

It was Glamour again. His youngest working girl. Her real name was Madge Dollop and she was from Birmingham, but Scott had decided her name should henceforth be ’glamour" - it was just better for business.

"Listen Madg…Glamour… I don’t care if your client ran off without paying… cuts no ice with me… I still get my 75 per cent.. even if it comes out of your own damn purse!"

Scott slammed the phone down. He had no interest in hearing her excuses and her Brummie-babble. He had a business to run.

There was a knock at the door. Was he to get no peace this night?

He opened the door. There on the floor, sodden and drenched from the evening rain and looking like he hadn’t had a decent meal since God-knows-when, was Flash-rat.

"Flash-rat! What are you doing here?"

Flash looked at the ground.

"I came to find you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you got kidnapped. I didn’t desert you - I just gave you up for dead."

"You had better come in," Scott said.

Flashrat sat down, the huge white leather sofa dwarfing his tiny, sodden, hairy frame.

"Champagne?" Scott offered.

Flash shook his head. "But I wouldn’t mind something to eat… I’ve not had a square meal in days."

Scott went to the mini bar and tossed Flashrat a small tube of Pringles. Flash ripped off the top and devoured them.

"So… why are you here?" Scott asked.

"I was wondering… well, I wanted to know if you wanted to go back to how we used to be. Partners in justice - fighting crime in Manchester."

Scott scoffed.

"Go back to living out of an abandoned council toilet? Living off discarded sandwiches from litter bins? Go back to that? Look around you Flash! I’m a made man now! I earn in one hour more money than I ever made in a day cleaning toilets!"

"That doesn’t seem like a lot of..."

Scott grabbed one of the bath towels from the onsuite and threw it at Flashrat.

"Feel that. Go on… feel it. That’s real cashmere. Cashmere, Flash!! I didn’t even know what cashmere was - I had to look it up."

"But everything we’ve been through… surely that must count for something?? And what about justice? We used to stand for something pure. Something real! Cashmere towels - white leather sofas, Champagne in crystal goblets, Pringles... this isn’t you, Scott - this is someone else’s dream!"

Scott walked to his hotel room door and held it open.

"I think you should leave Flash. I just don’t need you anymore. Besides, it would be bad for business if my customers saw me conversing with vermin."

"Vermin?? That’s what you think of me??"

Scott stared at the floor. Flash jumped off the sofa, and without another word walked out of the door and out of Scott’s life. Scott shut the door behind him.

Go after Flashrat and apologise TURN TO PAGE 201

Have another glass of Champers TURN TO PAGE 101